For many years, people have exchanged greeting messages with one another to celebrate holidays and special occasions. It has also been commonplace for an individual to include money or a check inside one of these cards when the holiday or special occasion, such as a Birthday, Christmas, Bar Mitzvah, or Graduation, calls for the giving of a gift.
With the advent of the Internet, it is now possible for a sender to order a paper greeting message online, provide information about herself and the recipient of the greeting message, and have the paper greeting message sent to the recipient directly from the online card seller. It is now also possible to request that a gift certificate be enclosed within such a greeting message ordered online. Such a combination of mass-produced paper greeting messages and an enclosed gift certificate is currently offered jointly by Hallmark.com and GiftCert.com. Other web sites, such as Blockbuster.com, enable the sender to customize the greeting message before inclusion of the gift certificate or gift card redeemable at the particular retail establishment. Unfortunately, with either of these systems, there is no means for attaching or transmitting therewith an actual negotiable payment instrument, such as a check or money order, which is cashable by the payee by depositing the same into the banking system, which processes the instrument through normal bank clearing channels.
Other web sites, such as BidPay.com, enable purchasers of an item from an auction web site to request a money order that can be mailed directly to the seller of the auctioned item to expedite the transfer of the auctioned item from the seller to the purchaser. Once a successful bid has been made for an item at an auction web site, the purchaser can choose to pay for the item by clicking on a BidPay.com logo, which links the purchaser to the BidPay.com web site. After the purchaser enters all of the necessary contact and billing information and after payment authorization has been received, a money order is printed out and mailed to the seller of the auctioned item. The money order is generally printed on an 8.5″×11″ sheet of pre-printed paper and is divided into two portions. Typically, one portion is the actual negotiable money order and the other portion is the accounting stub that contains the relevant information about the item being purchased as well as the contact information for the seller and the purchaser. Such money orders can be printed using known automated printing processes. However, as the BidPay.com web site explains, money orders are only available for auction related purchases. Additionally, the BidPay.com web site does not provide for nor is there a suggestion or reason for the purchaser to include a personalized greeting message and selected graphic image to the seller on the “accounting stub” portion of the money order.
As will be apparent from the foregoing description of the Hallmark.com, Blockbuster.com, and BidPay.com web sites, there is currently a need for an entity to be able to order a paper greeting message and request that some form of negotiable payment instrument be included therewith or attached thereto. For fraud and security reasons, a negotiable payment instrument is preferable to a generic gift certificate or gift card since the negotiable instrument can be made payable to the recipient of the message, to another payee, to a specific merchant, or to both a payee and a specific merchant. Preferably, such negotiable payment instrument would be removeably attached to the paper greeting message, which would avoid the manual or highly automated processes for inserting the payment instrument into the card. Thus, among other things, the present invention addresses these particular needs.